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Show HN: Bribes.fyi – Know before you go. New feature added
- pstuart 3mo agoI'm glad that bribery only exists in India and not in the United State. /s because Poe.
- neverenderr 3mo agoHa, no such exclusivity claimed here, just built for the country I actually know the system for.
- ckrapu 3mo agoIf it is satire, bravo. If sincere, congratulations.
- neverenderr 3mo agoIt is sincere, btw, thanks.
- tyre 3mo agoWhat do you think lend itself to this culture and how will it change? Is it considered normal / unsurprising / accepted? Like, “just cost of doing business”?
- micromacrofoot 3mo agotracking and publicizing them is a great start, bribes are easy to ask for in a fractured bureaucracy where the people taking them aren't closely monitored and the people paying them are generally uninformed
- antonvs 3mo agoWhere do you live? Because “this culture” now exists at the top level of the US government, for example. And in fact, even before the current administration, it was an accepted and legal aspect of government, for example “lobbyists” who handed out checks to the representatives whose influence they were controlling. In the US, it’s only at much lower levels that this is at all frowned on, especially in government. In private business you’ll still find e.g. apartment managers asking for bribes to do their job properly.
- verve_rat 3mo agoAnd if you squint a bit and stretch some definitions... then tipping culture isn't a million miles away from bribing culture. What is a tip if it's not a bribe to not spit in your food?
- Cyberdog 3mo agoFormer foodservice worker (in the US) for several years here. Servers do not spit in customers' food; that would be psychopathic behavior that no manager would tolerate and grounds for immediate termination, and the type of person who would actually do that is the type of antisocial person who is going to struggle in any job. If a known bad tipper ends up in a server's section, she'll roll her eyes in private, perhaps grumble to her co-workers, then go put on the customer service smile and serve them as normal. That said, please tip. Note that (where legal) servers are generally paid below minimum wage because it's expected their income will be supplemented with tips. Consider the tip not a bribe but as a payment for a service you were provided which, at least in the current cultural climate, is not being tacked on to the actual bill; you may not like that and want that cultural norm to change, but it hasn't changed yet and is unlikely to in the near future. If tipping really offends you, then order pick-up instead of dining in, or just cook at home.
- toomuchtodo 3mo ago> how will it change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-corruption_campaign_under_Xi_Jinping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-corruption_campaign_under... is a potential example
- ImHereToVote 3mo agoA cultural revolution.
- neverenderr 3mo agoJust trying my best.
- neverenderr 3mo ago[flagged]
- lozenge 3mo agoHas anybody reported a refusal and managing to complete their task? I just see 0% whatever I input.
- neverenderr 3mo agoYes, some of them reported refusal reports. You can find them just on the right side of the Transparency map, State Registry Ledger; then you can filter out them by most refusals, or you can also just browse the reports.
- neverenderr 3mo agoAlso set up a support link for anyone else who'd like to help keep it running: https://bribes.fyi/support https://bribes.fyi/support
- verve_rat 3mo agoI'm a little disappointed that https://bribes.fyi/bribes https://bribes.fyi/bribes doesn't redirect to that support page to be honest. When I saw the name/tag line I thought this would be a travel advice site, but I like this so much more. Great work.
- blitzar 3mo ago> Donations don’t influence the data. Supporting the platform buys no special treatment. How disappointing.
- neverenderr 3mo agoHahaha, yeah, figured "pay us and we'll bump your bribe report" probably isn't a great look. Sticking with boring and honest.
- neverenderr 3mo agoHa, fair, actually did think about making /bribes redirect straight to /support, missed opportunity not shipping it(had second thoughts). And yeah, that line's staying non-negotiable, sorry to disappoint. xD
- Exoristos 3mo agoWhat are the differences between a bribe and a tip, given X cultural milieu?
- gnfargbl 3mo agoPublic servants should neither ask for nor expect either?
- Exoristos 3mo agoWhat is the cultural context for this assertion?
- woadwarrior01 3mo agoaka Baksheesh in the Middle East
- neverenderr 3mo agoDirect homepage - https://bribes.fyi/ https://bribes.fyi/
- dark-star 3mo agoWhat happens to you in India when you are charged builty of bribery? What are the punishments, if any? (for the person receiving the bribe, not the person bribing, obviously)
- neverenderr 3mo agoHonestly, haven't looked into the legal side in detail. I'm mostly just providing the data (what happened, where), not the legal outcomes. That part's outside what I've built so far.
- dark-star 3mo agoAre you not worried that your site might lead to those people being executed (either legally, no idea if that's a thing in India, or illegaly)?
- neverenderr 3mo agoEverything is anonymous.
- iluvcommunism 3mo ago[dead]
- 9dev 3mo agoGood lord, that this is necessary is so depressing.
- neverenderr 3mo agoYeah, man, depressing yet the truth.
- zuzululu 3mo agoneed one for southeast asian countries and eastern europe
- neverenderr 3mo agoWould love to, honestly, but realistically can't take that on right now — money- and time-wise, keeping this one country's version running is already stretching things. Good idea though.
- derektank 3mo agoJust curious, but did any specific anti-corruption campaigns from history in other nations inspire the design here at all?
- neverenderr 3mo ago[dead]
- philajan 3mo agoJust wanted to let you know Twitter, GH, and RSS icons fall behind the nav bar at least on mobile.
- neverenderr 3mo agoYeah, I'm aware of that. I'm just thinking about what to do with those.
- losteric 3mo agothis is just crowd sourced data? Looks vibe coded. And immediately asking for donations for a short Claude job, pretty sus?
- neverenderr 3mo ago[flagged]
- oplav 3mo agoAnother discussion about corruption in India from 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20088870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20088870
- neverenderr 3mo agoI will look into it, thanks.
- tallanvor 3mo agoWhy do you feel the need to submit this 4 times over 1 week?
- enraged_camel 3mo agoIt's a cool site. I like the concept a lot. With HN, often times things have to be submitted multiple times before they get noticed and "stick" and generate interesting discussions. It's very dependent on luck, and there are no rules against it AFAIK (aside from what the spam detector flags).
- tallanvor 3mo agoRules generally come around due to bad behavior, which I would suggest submitting the same thing every other day for a week constitutes. It's also a very niche topic, even for this site, and not particularly useful or interesting.
- enraged_camel 3mo agoYou are not the arbiter of what is useful or interesting. India is a massive country and this site has a lot of Indian users.
- mtlynch 3mo agoReposting is officially allowed: > Are reposts ok? > If a story has not had significant attention in the last year or so, a small number of reposts is ok. Otherwise we bury reposts as duplicates. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html While we're on the subject of following site guidelines: > Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- helterskelter 3mo agoOnce you get outside the first world brides seem to be the norm -- every person I know who does international work has a story about having to bride somebody, especially if you need to get something through customs quickly, or at all. It's funny, you just make a bare effort to make it seem official and they'll get you right through. One guy would keep cash in a hidden pocket in his suitcase and if customs gave him trouble he'd politely inform them about the pocket they didn't check and everything would get resolved. Another guy would be bringing in parts for his company and when things got held up he'd talk to the person of the appropriate rank and offer to pay the "expedited" fee to get things through, as these were very important pieces of equipment. There was no expedited fee. Somebody else would literally just sneak them cash as they shook the custom officer's hand, but they had a working relationship and knew each other on a first name basis. One person got pissed off and refused to pay a bride and literally just waited until they changed shifts and his stuff was released.
- helterskelter 3mo agoForgot to add, there was one customs officer in $SMALLCOUNTRY who used to take bribes from somebody I knew, but was transferred to the taxation department. The person I knew died, but I found out through one of his coworkers that the former customs officer resolved a SNAFU with some tax paperwork that was about to turn into a very expensive disaster. He didn't even expect payment, he just wanted to do right by the person who had seriously bolstered his income for years, he was even asking about the guy's family how they were doing after his passing.
- neverenderr 3mo ago[flagged]
- neverenderr 3mo agoThis got flagged, not sure exactly why, but I'm just trying to keep things transparent and keep the site running. Wasn't trying to spam anything, just sharing the updates as they came. Requesting the mod to look into it.
- karagenit 3mo agoIt’s a cool site and you don’t seem to be spamming. But your account is new and has only posted links to your site (4 times) which probably caught the automated spam detection system. I’d gently encourage you to engage with the community and share some things that aren’t your own work as well. From the guidelines: > Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity.
- neverenderr 3mo agoI didn't know about the guidelines; I will keep these in mind, and thank you.
- zuzululu 3mo agoI think some people didn't like the contents of the website. I had no idea corruption and bribery was this common India and I guess some people didn't like to advertise it which honestly doesn't really matter as expectation is quite low already
- neverenderr 3mo agoYeah, that makes sense, and yes, corruption is very common in India, but I am just trying to make things better.
- neverenderr 3mo agoThanks for unflagging the post. Replying to everyone now; there are a lot of comments, so it might take a bit to get through them all.
- qwertyuiop_ 3mo agoBribe is a symptom not cause of low trust society.
- neverenderr 3mo agoFair, the actual disease is the trust deficit; this is just trying to make one symptom of it visible and measurable.